And I sympathize completely with what Tom said, don't get me wrong. I know that Martin Luther King Jr. also said some great stuff about the whole idea of "can't we do this at a more opportune time?". But the reality is both gays and democrats are going to have to do a serious re-think if any of us - the sane half of the country - are going to get ANYWHERE. And not being open to different approaches means just that: you don't get anywhere.
I read about the dems today too and just thought ha! no shit sherlock we need a candidate from the south! No shit!!! I mean these are really genius insights after the fact, aren't they? I appreciate McC's attempt to console me just after the election but come on, surely the dems can do better for a candidate than Kerry?? And I felt that way before the election!
Let the Venting begin!
Well I have been in the belly of the beast (Texas) for the past few days. I am traveling on business. I will be here for another week. Texas is a big place.
Driving around it has given me time to reflect. It should have not been a surprise that Bush won the election. I am not sure whether to believe all the stories I hear in the liberal press about counties discarding ballots cast for Kerry in massive numbers. Its too depressing to dig deeper.
Bush won the majority of votes in the United States by about 3 million. After the guy lied about WMD and started 2 wars without addressing any of The Arab World's concerns about why 9-11 really happened, after he gave a tax break to the richest 1%, after he got our country trillions deeper in debt, after he passed draconian legislation and called it The Patriot Act, after he let AK-47's and other assault weapons back onto the streets.
I've often said America deserves Bush. That Bush is the perfect president for a people who have genoicide on their hands and are mostly cult members of weird disprovable religious cults such as Christianity and Judaism. Junk food junkies who sit in front of the TVs to get their news instead of thinking and scouring foreign presses to get a real and balanced opinion of what really happened.
I hear Americans are applying in record numbers to immigrate to Canada. I hear that the Dems can't win the election until they find a suitable religious candidate (Edwards and Clinton in 2008 anyone?)
Let me state that I would never immigrate to Canada. Its on the wrong side of the Atlantic for one and it shares some of the same bad traits as America.
What I really feel is that America needs some sort of representative democracy in order to avoid alienating the Kerry proponents. After all, 55 million Kerry voters are going to get more unbelievable shit thrown at them in the next four years. Things are only going to get worse. The rest of the world will sit quietly and do nothing just as they did in the past.
Without a representative democracy like in most European countries, I see America slipping into tyranny and fascism. The youth of today seem to be increasingly Christian and little moulds of their parents.
As I drive around Texas, in the belly of the beast I see the poor in growing numbers and the rich dining comfortable in corporate restaurants. There may not really be two Americas. But after 4 more years I believe there will be. Hopefully by that time I will be a Swedish citizen and relocating to Southern France.
Driving around it has given me time to reflect. It should have not been a surprise that Bush won the election. I am not sure whether to believe all the stories I hear in the liberal press about counties discarding ballots cast for Kerry in massive numbers. Its too depressing to dig deeper.
Bush won the majority of votes in the United States by about 3 million. After the guy lied about WMD and started 2 wars without addressing any of The Arab World's concerns about why 9-11 really happened, after he gave a tax break to the richest 1%, after he got our country trillions deeper in debt, after he passed draconian legislation and called it The Patriot Act, after he let AK-47's and other assault weapons back onto the streets.
I've often said America deserves Bush. That Bush is the perfect president for a people who have genoicide on their hands and are mostly cult members of weird disprovable religious cults such as Christianity and Judaism. Junk food junkies who sit in front of the TVs to get their news instead of thinking and scouring foreign presses to get a real and balanced opinion of what really happened.
I hear Americans are applying in record numbers to immigrate to Canada. I hear that the Dems can't win the election until they find a suitable religious candidate (Edwards and Clinton in 2008 anyone?)
Let me state that I would never immigrate to Canada. Its on the wrong side of the Atlantic for one and it shares some of the same bad traits as America.
What I really feel is that America needs some sort of representative democracy in order to avoid alienating the Kerry proponents. After all, 55 million Kerry voters are going to get more unbelievable shit thrown at them in the next four years. Things are only going to get worse. The rest of the world will sit quietly and do nothing just as they did in the past.
Without a representative democracy like in most European countries, I see America slipping into tyranny and fascism. The youth of today seem to be increasingly Christian and little moulds of their parents.
As I drive around Texas, in the belly of the beast I see the poor in growing numbers and the rich dining comfortable in corporate restaurants. There may not really be two Americas. But after 4 more years I believe there will be. Hopefully by that time I will be a Swedish citizen and relocating to Southern France.
That's a nice assessment, Sloth. Cheers. I'm glad you've seen what it's like in "the belly of the beast". Not that I would wish it on anyone, but it's nice to share in the misery of experiencing that awful place with a church on every corner.
I broke down and cried tonight, I really did. Just some things in the paper I read that just seemed so sick, so twisted they don't even bear repeating here. Oh okay...they were words falling out of Rumsfeld's mouth and I felt time suddenly slow down in the middle of reading this article. I just literally could not believe what I was reading. It was that he...used the word "terrorists" to describe the people they are fighting over there. That just seemed absurd to me. I mean when you invade a country, and then some people fight against you, does that make them terrorists? I don't think so. My definition of terrorist is someone who essentially commits a war-like act in the middle of a place that isn't a war zone. But if you're already IN a war zone...?
All this was exacerbated by the fact that the song on the radio when my alarm went off this morning was The Clash "Straight To Hell". My favorite Clash song. But yet I'd never seen it in the same light as I saw it this morning. It's a f***ing war song. You know? Not like "war song" in the sense of Vietnam that we remember from long ago. But like war as in the war that is going on right this instant. And then the stupid DJ I can't stand had to go and TALK over the end of the song in a happy tone and it just seemed so incredibly upsetting and disrespectful. And all day that song has been weaving itself in and out of my mind.
And I just wanted to get on here and write about this because it seems to me that something is up ahead for us. Even if it doesn't happen for another 10-15 years. Something dreadful. It may not even be a terrorist attack. It may be the climate change, economic collapse, I really don't know what it is yet, I just feel it's there and it's coming. And so some people say "well we shouldn't overdramatize this Bush thing we have survived for the last 4 years, we can survive 4 more" but I still think that this thing I can't name is coming, even if Bush is long gone by then. And somehow this doesn't look the way I thought it would look now that I've written it down. And anyone is welcome to take me away to the looney bin but these are my thoughts tonight and I am dead tired and need to go to sleep now anyway.
Catch you later.
I broke down and cried tonight, I really did. Just some things in the paper I read that just seemed so sick, so twisted they don't even bear repeating here. Oh okay...they were words falling out of Rumsfeld's mouth and I felt time suddenly slow down in the middle of reading this article. I just literally could not believe what I was reading. It was that he...used the word "terrorists" to describe the people they are fighting over there. That just seemed absurd to me. I mean when you invade a country, and then some people fight against you, does that make them terrorists? I don't think so. My definition of terrorist is someone who essentially commits a war-like act in the middle of a place that isn't a war zone. But if you're already IN a war zone...?
All this was exacerbated by the fact that the song on the radio when my alarm went off this morning was The Clash "Straight To Hell". My favorite Clash song. But yet I'd never seen it in the same light as I saw it this morning. It's a f***ing war song. You know? Not like "war song" in the sense of Vietnam that we remember from long ago. But like war as in the war that is going on right this instant. And then the stupid DJ I can't stand had to go and TALK over the end of the song in a happy tone and it just seemed so incredibly upsetting and disrespectful. And all day that song has been weaving itself in and out of my mind.
And I just wanted to get on here and write about this because it seems to me that something is up ahead for us. Even if it doesn't happen for another 10-15 years. Something dreadful. It may not even be a terrorist attack. It may be the climate change, economic collapse, I really don't know what it is yet, I just feel it's there and it's coming. And so some people say "well we shouldn't overdramatize this Bush thing we have survived for the last 4 years, we can survive 4 more" but I still think that this thing I can't name is coming, even if Bush is long gone by then. And somehow this doesn't look the way I thought it would look now that I've written it down. And anyone is welcome to take me away to the looney bin but these are my thoughts tonight and I am dead tired and need to go to sleep now anyway.
Catch you later.
ok, i'm done with mourning
it was good to vent while it lasted but i am over with that. just for the record, here are my final thoughts:
- the gay marriage issue as such bores me. close as the election was, kerry could have pulled it off, if he had been a better campaigner, or if he had merely broken bush's momentum by responding strongly to that scandalous swift boat shit.
- it is interesting that the red-blue divide is less about states than about city/country. all the urban regions (except for those in texas) voted for kerry. all rural counties went for bush.
- having said that, i find the polemic but true observation fascinating that all those states which were free before the civil war voted kerry, while all those which were pro-slavery went for bush. that old division is not dead yet.
- the gay marriage issue as such bores me. close as the election was, kerry could have pulled it off, if he had been a better campaigner, or if he had merely broken bush's momentum by responding strongly to that scandalous swift boat shit.
- it is interesting that the red-blue divide is less about states than about city/country. all the urban regions (except for those in texas) voted for kerry. all rural counties went for bush.
- having said that, i find the polemic but true observation fascinating that all those states which were free before the civil war voted kerry, while all those which were pro-slavery went for bush. that old division is not dead yet.